But without undertaking to scrutinize the motives of the leading statesmen of South Carolina, we repeat that none of them have yet condescended to inform us, how they reconcile their admissions as to the authority of the General Government in ordinary cases, and that of the United States under the amending clause, with their doctrine of 'unimpaired sovereignty.' Mr. Calhoun, in the document before us, appears to be aware of the difficulty, but does not meet it in the full and frank manner which we had a right to expect from a man of his character. He takes refuge in vague and indefinite forms of language. 'Previous to the adoption of the present Constitution,' says he, 'no power could be exercised over any State, by any other or all of the States, without its own consent.' In other words, the States were then independent of each other, and, in the common phrase, sovereign. How are they now?--'The present Constitution,' continues Mr. Calhoun, 'has made in this particular _a most important modification in their condition_. I allude to the provision which gives validity to amendments of the Constitution, when ratified by three-fourths of the States, a provision which has not attracted as much attention as its importance deserves.'[A] It appears, then, that although the sovereignty of the States is _unimpaired_, their condition in this particular has undergone _a most important modification_. Now the long word _modification_, though it be, like Bardolph's _accommodated_, 'a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command,' means, with all its six syllables, neither more nor less than the old-fashioned English monosyllable _change_.--_Modification_, says Johnson, is the act of _modifying_; and to _modify_ is to _change_. It seems, then, that the condition of the States has undergone in this particular a most important _change_. It is no longer what it was. But they were before independent: of course they are now not independent. Such appears to be the plain English of the vague term _modification_.